Carbon Dioxide Forms Polymeric Materials Under High Pressure

Carbon dioxide is a molecular gas at ambient conditions and an important constituent of the Earth's atmosphere. It is also a likely component in the Earth's mantle, and it plays an important role in the life cycle. But at high pressure, carbon dioxide can transform to a solid. Even more interesting, as the pressure increases and temperature varies, the intra- and inter-molecular interactions of carbon dioxide change dramatically and this results in different crystal structures in polymeric dense phases with interesting physical properties, such as "super-hardness". Thus carbon dioxide has become an extremely hot topic in science in the last decade.[....]